Viewing: Crimson Peak
Feb. 26th, 2019 03:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

For someone like me, raised on Dark Shadows soap opera reruns, Edgar Allan Poe, and gothic novels, this was a delight! It has it all: a gorgeous, charming foreign man with a secret; a wonderfully falling apart, ruined, and isolated house of incredible opulence; a naive bookish young ingenue with more backbone than is suspected; horrific apparitions; subtext galore; beautiful gowns and nightgowns with the long romantic hair to match; and dangerous experimental mining equipment, mysterious vats, and a rickety elevator.
The performances were magnificently overwrought. They had to be, just to be seen in the incredible setting! In typical Del Toro fashion, the film is darkly gorgeous, all rich textures and moody lighting. Del Toro clearly knows the tropes of this genre well and used them to great effect. Horrible in the best possible way!